(Lausanne) The International Olympic Committee on Thursday banned the International Boxing Federation (IBA) from the Olympic world, the culmination of four years of conflict, while confirming the maintenance of the noble art on the program of the 2024 and 2028 Olympic Games.
Convened for the occasion in early June by the executive board, the 140e session of the IOC “withdrew (its) recognition” from the IBA, already “suspended” since June 26, 2019, by 69 votes for, one against and ten abstentions.
The IBA therefore definitively loses the organization of the Olympic boxing tournaments and the financial windfall that accompanies it, to live solely from its own resources.
The boxing body, discredited by repeated arbitration scandals, an abysmal debt and a former leader considered by the United States as “one of the leaders of organized crime” Uzbek, had nevertheless proclaimed its desire to reforms by adopting a new president in December 2020, the Russian Umar Kremlev.
But in a vitriolic report published in early June, the IOC judged not only that the IBA had “failed to fulfill the conditions” set for its reinstatement, but that it had gone so far as “intimidation”, in particular when the CIO took away the organization of the Paris-2024 Olympic tournament after having deprived it of that of Tokyo-2020.
The Olympic organization also deplores the persistent financial dependence on the Russian giant Gazprom, its main sponsor brought by Kremlev, who had also challenged the IOC by authorizing Russian and Belarusian boxers to fight under their own colors at the Women’s Worlds in March in India. .
“The IOC has constantly and patiently tried to help on the subjects of concern”, but the IBA “was not able to provide the elements allowing the lifting of its suspension”, summed up Thursday Christophe De Kepper, the general manager of the organization.
However, the Olympic body has “no problem with boxing or with boxers”, said IOC President Thomas Bach straight away, and Christophe De Kepper confirmed the discipline’s presence at the Paris 2024 Olympics. as at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, whose final sports program will be adopted in September.
The disgrace of the IBA coincides with the emergence of a new actor, the very young international federation World Boxing, propelled behind the scenes by several Western federations and already joined by those of the United States and Switzerland. Britain, the Netherlands and New Zealand have indicated they want to follow suit.